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Vegetation coverage change in the EU: patterns inside and outside Natura 2000 protected areas

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Abstract

EU conservation policy is primarily based on the Natura 2000 network of protected areas (PAs). We analyzed the land-cover changes between 2000 and 2006 inside 25,703 Natura 2000 sites in 24 EU Member States, and compared them with those observed outside the PAs. At the EU level, ‘Artificial surfaces’ and ‘Agricultural areas’ exhibit lower rates of transformation within PAs than outside. ‘Forests and semi-natural areas’ marginally increased inside PAs, while they marginally decreased outside. In States that joined the EU before 2000, landscape transformation rates were low, and inside PAs ‘Forest’ preservation was accompanied with a shift from intensive agricultural practices ‘Permanent arable land’ to more diverse ‘Agricultural mosaics’. In new Member States (most of them located in Eastern Europe), there was agricultural abandonment, with conversion to ‘Artificial surfaces’ or ‘Natural vegetation’, both within and outside PAs. Broad scale EU policies (like the Common Agricultural Policy) and socio-economic drivers (like the transition from planned to market economy) seem to be dominant factors in explaining land-cover transformations, while conservation policies may moderate these trends inside PAs.

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Acknowledgments

Funding for this research has been provided by the Large-Scale Integrating Project within FP7, SCALES (Grant 226 852). We would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

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Author notes

  1. Evangelia Apostolopoulou

    Present address: Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3EN, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental and Natural Resources Management, University of Patras, 30100, Agrinio, Greece

    Athanasios S. Kallimanis

  2. Department of Ecology, School of Biology, Aristotle University, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Konstantinos Touloumis, Antonios D. Mazaris, Evangelia Apostolopoulou, Sofia Stefanidou & John D. Pantis

  3. Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Marlow Building, Canterbury, CT2 7NR, UK

    Joseph Tzanopoulos

  4. School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, Reading University, Reading, RG6 6AR, UK

    Anna V. Scott & Simon G. Potts

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  1. Athanasios S. Kallimanis
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  2. Konstantinos Touloumis
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Correspondence to Athanasios S. Kallimanis.

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Communicated by Dirk Sven Schmeller.

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Kallimanis, A.S., Touloumis, K., Tzanopoulos, J. et al. Vegetation coverage change in the EU: patterns inside and outside Natura 2000 protected areas. Biodivers Conserv 24, 579–591 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-014-0837-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-014-0837-9

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